The sun broke, light stabbing over distant hills. Roman would not be finished by something as simple as sunlight, oh no. He wasn’t at the mercy of anything.
The light on my face was warm, caressing, and the most joyful sensation I’d ever felt in my life. I was alive. Another day had come.
Standing, I wiped my mud-streaked hand across my face. I didn’t know why I should be crying, but I was. I was just tired, that was it. I could sleep now. Go home, sleep. Not worry quite so much.
Amid Roman’s ashes lay a hard metal object. When I knelt to examine it, I knew what I would find: a bronze coin, like those he’d given to his followers. The first of them, the master. I picked it up gingerly, trying to avoid the flakes and ashes. I hoped for a wind to come and blow him away, but the air was still. His remains lingered, like the charred bits of an abandoned campfire.
The face on this coin was almost recognizable: a profile, like the old coins with kings and emperors on them. I couldn’t tell if this one was Roman or Lightman. Didn’t matter, they were gone and it was over. I went to the lake’s edge and threw it, hurled it after the Maltese cross. Let it sink to the depths.
When it vanished under the surface of the water, I felt better. Smiled, even. God, that sunlight felt good.
On the shore, partly in the water and partly out, I found clay shards, broken pieces of the lamp he’d been holding. The core of the spell, the Manus Herculei. Broken, done, gone. I stretched my arms, rounded my shoulders. I could have laughed, I suddenly felt so light.
I turned around to walk back up the rise, but two men stood there. The same two Men in Black who’d been following me all week. I hadn’t heard or smelled them approach. My hackles went up all over again. Wolf roared, ready to break free.
I marched toward them. “Who the hell are you?”
“We’d like to talk to you, if it’s all right,” the olive-skinned one said. Like we’d just run into each other on one of the hiking trails.
“Do you have any idea what’s happened here?” I pointed at the lake, which had so recently been on fire, and at the smear of soot that used to be Roman. My gestures were wild, my expression most likely crazy. I could not deal with one more thing.
“Yes, we do,” he said simply. And I believed him.
I sagged, put a hand on my suddenly aching head. “Who the hell are you?”
“You can call me Ezra. Call him Jacob. We’re Powers,” said the pale-skinned one.
“Authorities,” said the other, Jacob. “Though that’s not really important here.
I stared. “Of course you are.” I was sure I had read something about this in Paradise Lost. Or someplace else. One of those angelic magic books. Powers, Authorities—they were categories of angels. “The other side of the coin, right?”
“This is such a beautiful place,” Jacob said, gazing around at the dawn-lit trees and lake, which glowed golden. “It’s such a shame—you see, it’s always been collateral damage in our war. A bastion. A prize. Our kinds have been fighting for control of it for a very long time.”
“A very long time,” Ezra added with a sad smile. “Even though our direct influence is limited. Surprisingly limited, really. Both sides need pawns to do our work.”
“But Earth is full of pawns,” Jacob finished.
For a long moment I just stood there. Even Wolf didn’t have a growl for that. Softly, I muttered, “We weren’t fighting for you. We were fighting for ourselves. For each other. So, you know—fuck you.”
I started the hike back up the hill. I had to find Ben. Or what was left of him.
Jacob said, “Yes, and it made you stronger than you ever would have been as pawns. Lightman doesn’t understand that.”
“Kitty. Your friends will be here soon,” Ezra said.
I stopped, turned. “They’re okay? They’re alive? All of them?”
“They’re mostly okay, yes.”
My heart lurched at that “mostly.” I had to find them, I had to get to them now—
“Just one more moment, please,” Jacob said, reaching. We have something for you, if you want it.”
Ezra pulled something from his jacket pocket, held it up. A carved stone on a gold chain, simple and straightforward. Nothing to be afraid of.
“No,” I said, hand up. “I’m sorry, but no. No more amulets, no more talismans or crosses or coins, or … or … Just no more magic.”
“Would you like to hear what it does first?” Ezra said.
I sighed. “Okay.”
“It gives you a year and a day. A nice fairy-tale length of time, isn’t it? A year and a day.”
“To do what?” I said.
“To be healed.”
Jacob said brightly, “It’s another fairy-tale thing—like the good fairy in Sleeping Beauty. We can’t take away the curse. But we can give you a year and a day.”
“He—” Ezra nodded in the direction Lightman had been standing, was it just a few minutes ago? “He isn’t the only one able to influence these things.”
They both seemed very pleased with themselves, waiting happily for my reaction.
“A year and a day,” I said, very slowly and carefully. “Without shifting. A year and a day as a human.”
“Not precisely. You’ll always be a werewolf. But this will give you … time.”
My hands went to my stomach, which seemed a ridiculously stereotypical gesture. But both men nodded. “Time to be pregnant,” I said, just to be sure.
“We thought you’d appreciate it, after what you’ve been through,” said Jacob.
The world had gone sideways. It was like I couldn’t see straight, my head was ringing so much. “Like, a reward? I didn’t do this for a reward—”
“Of course not,” said Ezra. “This is more to say … we like what you’ve been doing and you should keep doing it. Do you want it?”
A year and a day. I nodded. He came forward and put the chain around my neck. Did something that shortened it, so I couldn’t just pull it off again. If I looked, I mostly likely wouldn’t find a clasp.
The stone looked ancient, prehistoric. The carving was round, primitive, stylized, eyes and flattened ears on a canine face the only visible features. A wolf. I understood what he’d meant—I wouldn’t be human. Wolf would always be here, looking out for me. And that was fine.
A sacrifice, for a child. As it should be.
I wiped tears away with the back of my hand. I was leaking. I didn’t say thank you, because there were rules about thanking fairies—you didn’t do it, it angered them. I wasn’t sure if that rule applied to … Powers, or whatever they were, but for something this magical and crazy it seemed best not to take chances. I clasped the stone wolf tight in my hand. A clear gesture of astonishment and maybe even gratitude.
“Have a nice day, Katherine Norville,” the pale Man in Black said. They walked away. Just like that.
For what seemed a very long time, I stood still. Long enough for the sun to rise fully over the horizon and bathe me in light. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think.
I wanted to find Ben. I needed Ben, right now.
I still didn’t know what had happened to Ben and the others. I couldn’t form the thought that Ashtoreth may have won, that Rick and his friends might have been a few minutes too late. I couldn’t face it. So I stood by the shore of the lake, turned to the direction I’d last seen my mate, put my hands around my mouth and howled. Called his name, but it sounded like an echoing wolf song to my ears.
Ten seconds, I waited. Twenty.
Then heard the responding call, “Kitty!”
I ran. Met him coming down the slope that marked out this inlet of the lake. He looked battered, even with his werewolf healing. Bruises on his cheek, cuts on his arms. But they were just cuts, and he hadn’t been poisoned by silver. He smelled safe. I took a running leap into his arms, and he caught me, pulling me close, body to body. I might never let go.
He loosened his grip enough to let me breathe, but we held each other’s ar
ms and started talking in a hyperactive, adrenaline-fueled flood.
“We’re still here,” he said. “Does that mean we won?”
“I think so? Probably?”
“Roman—”
“Dead. Gone. Ashtoreth—she didn’t kill you.”
“She smacked me—I fell, that’s where I got the cuts. Then she went after you. I couldn’t stop her, I freaked out, almost lost it—”
“Rick came back! Rick and the vampire ninjas!”
“I know! I ran into them as they were leaving, they’ve got this Land Rover with blacked-out windows—”
I kissed him, because I couldn’t stand there not kissing him anymore. His hands tightened around me; his lips took a second to get over the shock and stress and respond. When they did, I kissed even more, devouring kisses, and my body reacted, legs wrapping around his, locking me to him. I wanted to rip his clothes off. And why the hell not? There was no one around. It was a beautiful morning. I slipped my hands under his shirt, rubbed them up his warm back.
He gave a hoarse chuckle and spoke between kisses, “Not that I’m complaining, but something’s gotten into you.”
“A year and a day,” I said, which I knew made no sense. I didn’t care about sense. I did a quick round of math. I didn’t even stop to think if I trusted the Men in Black. I didn’t much care if this was going to turn out to be another cosmic joke. It was a chance, and I had faith. “We have three months to get knocked up.”
He stared at me. “Wait. What?”
“Too much to explain. But there’s a chance. We have a chance. Please say yes.”
Another moment of staring at me, and I was afraid he was going to make me explain, or he was going to say he didn’t want a baby after all, or it was all too much and he didn’t want anything to do with me anymore. But what he did, finally, was grab my shirt and pull it over my head, and hitch my legs over his hips so he could carry me to the nearest clear spot of ground.
Between nuzzling my ear and massaging my breast, he found the stone wolf around my neck. “This,” he said, his voice husky, “has something to do with it?”
“More magic,” I murmured back.
“Figured,” he said, and moved on to yanking off my jeans.
My head tilted back, my eyes closed. “Don’t you want to know what it does?”
“Not interested in anything but you right now, hon.”
And those right there were the real magic words.
Chapter 21
OUR SEX was fast and fueled by adrenaline. It was also filled with love and need and relief. Resting after, the cool air against our skin and the bright sun made this feel like the morning after a full moon. I started giggling out of sheer joy at being alive, and Ben joined in. We’d saved the world. We could do anything.
Over the next rise, the geysers of West Thumb had started bubbling again, a pleasant, distant froth and hissing that reminded me of boiling pasta or a mad scientist’s lab. The caldera had settled. Nothing was going to be blowing up today.
Far too quickly, we heard voices and caught the scent of familiar people walking upwind.
“Shit,” Ben muttered against my naked shoulder.
I grinned. “They’re alive.”
We scrambled for our clothes and managed to make ourselves presentable by the time Cormac came over the rise, looking for us. Well, actually, Ben was picking pine needles out of my hair when Cormac, Tina, and Sun came over the rise. Ben might actually have blushed when Cormac stopped, smirked, looking around at the treetops as if examining the foliage.
I took another breath, scanned the group—Grant and Hardin were missing, and my gut twisted.
“Where…” I said, stepping forward. “What … Grant, Jessi—”
“Hospital,” Cormac said. My knees went so weak I almost sat down.
“They’re fine,” Tina added quickly. “They’ll be fine, they just got banged up.”
“Oh my God,” I muttered, hand on my head. Ben put his hand on my back to steady me.
Sun Wukong laughed. “That’s funny,” he said. “I mean, considering.”
They all looked banged up, to tell the truth. Cormac had a bandage wrapped around his arm. Tina, still recovering from her previous injuries, had new bruises on her chin, her arms. Except Sun—he looked completely unharmed, as usual. I didn’t know if anything could hurt him. Rather, I never wanted to face down the thing that could hurt him.
“And you two—you’re fine, I take it?” Cormac said, politely not mentioning that we looked like a couple of teenagers caught in the backseat of a car.
“Yeah. Just fine,” Ben said, smirking back.
Sun strolled along the shore. “Well, something blew up here.”
In the daylight, the place looked even worse, very much like a bomb had gone off, right where Roman had been standing. All the markings he’d drawn in the soil, all the evidence of his ritual had been swept away. The nearest trees were broken, the air still smelled of soot. But the water looked calm.
“The amulet worked,” I said.
Cormac went to the smear of ashes that used to be Roman. He recognized a destroyed vampire when he saw one. He kicked at it and turned away. “Good.”
* * *
CORMAC EXPLAINED that Ashtoreth left the geyser basin right after we did. Her job wasn’t to kill everyone—it was to stop me, keep us away from Roman, prevent us from interfering. She hadn’t let anything distract her.
The other demons kept fighting, but Cormac and the others quickly noticed that they had help opposing them. We now knew they were vampires of the Order of Saint Lazarus of the Shadows. They meant that the mortal defenders had a fighting chance. They’d been injured, but they won. The vampires had left the scene without stopping to say a word.
When the sun rose and the world was still there—when the geysers and fumaroles started bubbling again—they knew I must have succeeded. They focused next on getting help for the most badly injured. I couldn’t wait to see them all again. To thank them. I hadn’t gotten my friends killed, and that seemed like the greatest victory. Like Cormac said, I might have had the biggest target painted on me, but it was everyone else who’d stood between that target at the bad guys.
We tracked down vehicles and gathered the caravan together. Sun took off by himself in his beat-up truck. “I have to report back that all is well. That’ll be fun!” The whole thing might have been a jaunt for him. I gave him a hug, asked him to say hi to Xiwangmu and Anastasia.
I found my phone. I still had a loose thread that needed to be cleared up before I would feel entirely good about this morning. We waited outside the Jeep, Ben listening close while the dial tone rang, and rang.
Then Shaun finally, finally answered. “Hey! Kitty! Holy shit!”
I might have started crying. Just a few tears of relief. “You have no idea how good it is to hear you.”
“Oh, I think I do.”
“Are you okay? Is everyone okay, have you seen everybody?”
“We’re here, we’re all fine. What about you, we went to the house but no one’s there, and New Moon—shit, have you seen what happened to New Moon?”
“Ben and I are in Yellowstone. We’re fine. At least, we are now.”
“Yellowstone. Wait, what?”
“Yeah. Long story.”
“Tell me about it. Kitty, I have so much to tell you. You’re never going to believe it.”
I laughed. “Oh yeah? Not if you don’t believe me first.”
“You’re on.”
And astonishingly, all was right with the world.
* * *
WE STAYED in the Yellowstone area another day, to wait for Grant and Hardin to get patched up. She had puncture wounds in her leg and chest, and gashes that needed stitches. Grant also needed stitches, and had a concussion. But they were both conscious and smiling when I finally saw them. With some persuasive fast talking, they were able to get themselves discharged from the hospital. And without filing a report with the police. Because h
ow would they explain any of this?
We rolled into Denver at nightfall.
The city seemed both brilliantly serene and totally worn out. We were returning to an old battlefield at the end of the war. I finally felt safe—might have been the first time I’d felt safe since meeting Roman and learning of the Long Game. But it was over now. It was really over.
I made more phone calls. Cheryl had managed to get the family out of Denver by cooking up some story about wanting to see the Grand Canyon, and didn’t a spontaneous family trip seem like fun? When I called to tell her everything was fine, she sounded relieved, but not about the world not ending.
“Oh thank God, I was running out of excuses, and I have spent way too long in one hotel room with the kids. Kitty, what happened? Is everything really okay?”
“Yeah. It is now. A bad guy was trying to blow up the Yellowstone caldera, and it would have destroyed Denver. But we stopped him.”
“If anyone else said that, I’d laugh. But you’re serious?”
“Yeah, ’fraid so. But everything’s okay now.” Everything, everything would be okay.
“Well, the plus side is we had a nice trip. The kids love the Grand Canyon.”
“You know, I’ve never seen the Grand Canyon,” I said absently. I wondered why.
“Well then, you should go. It’s pretty cool.”
Yeah. My to-do list had pretty much cleared up for the near future. Maybe I could go see the Grand Canyon.
* * *
SUNSET MEANT calling all the vampires, at least the ones on this side of the globe. I half expected Alette to already know everything because of her network. But she sounded surprised, and pleased.
“And Dux Bellorum is really, truly dead?” she asked. “You saw him die?”
“I did. He fell on his sword. Figuratively speaking.”
“That … is somehow deeply appropriate.”
As happy as I was not having to worry about the guy anymore, I was still just a bit sad about the whole thing. “There’s always another tool,” Lightman had said. Roman had known he was a tool the entire time, and he must have been satisfied with the role.